Oh look. A new entry right after I said I'd do one. But don't get too excited. I'm mostly going to let someone else do the talking: George Monbiot, a political and environmental writer that I admire greatly.
I have just finished reading Bring on The Apocalypse, which consisted of selected essays from what I believe were his editorials originally published in The Guardian. The selections are fairly wide ranging, bringing together his views on the post-9/11 world, politics from around the world, the environment (for which he is particularly well known for, especially after publishing Heat; it's another book which I highly recommend for its thorough and unflinching look at what changes will be necessary to prevent global warming), and religion. This particular quote is taken from an essay on intelligent design in the United States, which contained a piece of spiritual insight which particularly moved me:
"Darwinian evolution tells us that we are incipient compost: assemblages of complex molecules that, for no greater purpose than to secure sources of energy against competing claims, have developed the ability to speculate. After a few score years, the molecules disaggregate and return whence they came. Period.
As a gardener and ecologist, I find this oddly comforting. I like the idea of literal reincarnation: that the molecules of which I am composed will, once I have rotted, be incorporated into other organisms. Bits of me will be pushing through the growing tips of trees, will creep over them as caterpillars, with hunt those caterpillars are birds. When I die, I would like to be buried in a fashion that ensures that no part of me is wasted. Then I can claim to have been of some use after all.
Is this not better than the awful lottery of judgment? Is a future we can predict not more comforting than one committed to the whims of inscrutable authority? Is eternal death not a happier prospect than eternal life? The atoms of which we are composed, which we have borrowed momentarily from the ecosphere, will be recycled until the universe collapses. This is our continuity, our eternity? Why should anyone want more?" (Monbiot, 2008 [2005]: 20; my emphasis)
I suppose Monbiot might be faulted simply for recycling the myth of "the cycle of life" into a more poetic version, but I think he succeeds in removing the necessity of anchoring such an idea into a diety while retaining both the profoundity of the natural world and what it means to be human and a part of that world. The line "Is eternal death not a happier prospect than eternal life?" initially puzzled me. If reversed ("Is not eternal life not a happier prospect than eternal death?"), it would likely be emphatic rhetoric to suggest that his version of living forever is preferable to a Christian hell. But in its current form, I think Monbiot is attempting to hold the idea of an afterlife accountable. If we would accept death, we would not be willing to kill for "life". Hence, I think Monbiot alludes to the idea of religious terrorism here.
I would also encourage anyone who might be interested in following Monbiot's work to visit his blog at www.monbiot.com. So far as I can tell, he has kept all of his articles alive there, and also offers some rather interesting, unorthodox, and inspiring careers advice particularly pertinent to would-be journalists.
References:
Monbiot, George. (2008). Bring on the Apocalypse: Essays on Self-Destruction. Mississauga, ON: Random House.
Monbiot, George. (2008 [2005]). "Life with no purpose." In Monbiot (2008).
